


Reflections Upon Bombay

by Orockthro



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander - All Media Types
Genre: Book 3: HMS Surprise, Book 4: The Mauritius Command, F/M, Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 05:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4378364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orockthro/pseuds/Orockthro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack regards him in the dim light. “You are well enough?”<br/>“Quite well,” Stephen says, and rises. His blood is still thin, his hands are still mangled, his heart is cut out for Diana twice over, but for Jack he can be well enough.<br/> <br/>  <i>(Or, a series of short stories set between the third <i>(HMS Surprise) </i>and fourth <i>(The Mauritius Command) </i>books, filling in some gaps.)</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Study of Diana Villiers

Stephen contemplates Diana. It is not a new contemplation, nor one he particularly relishes. His time would be far better served writing up his observations on the various species of beetles he collected for Sir Joseph, or even attempting to draw them, although he is no great hand at scientific illustration. And yet his mind returns to her, unwillingly. The way her voice lilts when she spears him with a cunningly crafted word, how her lovely face swells with emotion. Her beauty, that she covets as much as the men she surrounds herself with. She has seen the world and all its spitefulness already, and turns, ready to attack before that meanness lands another blow on her. He turns her piecemeal components over and over in his mind, as if she were a specimen he had the opportunity to see in the wild, but not collect. He is unable to stop, and around he goes again to remember the complexion of her face.

Perhaps this is how Jack felt when they almost fought, nearly two years ago, caught up in the cyclone of her being. It’s a time they do not speak of. The _Polychrest_ foundered, Jack was wounded quite severely, and that part of their lives was over, sunk, damaged and left behind to heal without their picking at it.

India is behind them, just as Diana is behind him. The ring buried, his heart buried, too. Jack will marry Sophie, and that is how it should be, and if Stephen ever allowed himself to think Diana could marry a man like himself, he was nothing but a fool. She is in America, with a man of means, and he told Jack he wished her well.

It is not, he is half-surprised to discover, a lie. He does wish her well. For all that she is a cruel, biting woman, it is because of his adoration of her sharp self that he can only hope she finds happiness with the poor wretch she has attached herself to.

“Stephen, are you there?”

It is Jack, standing in his door like a great mass of flesh, and Stephen is glad he has taken his draught of laudanum already; Jack’s glowing face is too much to bear.

“I am, joy.”

“Will you not come and play a tune with me? I am filled with vigor; my fingers are already tapping away. I must take up my fiddle or go mad, and I much prefer to play with you, brother, than alone.”

Then Jack regards him in the dim light. “You are well enough?”

“Quite well,” Stephen says, and rises. His blood is still thin, his hands are still mangled, his heart is cut out for Diana twice over, but for Jack he can be well enough. Jack’s great face, sunburned and uniquely ugly and somehow perfect, smiles broadly. Stephen sees his own hand in that face, the scars he helped to heal, and is glad, truly, that Jack, at least, will have all that he wishes for.


	2. The Problem of Cabbages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack has his cottage, his wife, and his children. And yet he is ill at ease.

Stephen leaves. Jack supposes it only makes sense; he has a duty to King and Country, although Stephen has reminded him time and time again that although he acts on behalf of the England, his true motivations are simply against Buonaparte, not with anyone in particular. But the notion is the same, in the end. And the result is, too, in that Stephen is gone, and Jack is in a cottage with two screaming babies, an unhappy wife, and an unhappier mother-in-law, and a spoiled niece. And his cabbages are dying.

It is the last offense that preoccupies his mind, and he kicks at the soil of his garden with great gusto. If it were the sea it would obey him, of that he has no doubt, but it is not, and the land has never felt quite right under his feet, even when it is Ashgrove Cottage and by every right his own, paid for, although only just.

He looks at the cabbage, and the cabbage looks back at him, their wilting leaves taunting him, as if saying, ‘Truly, Jack Aubrey?’

It is the worse for Stephen leaving. He could, perhaps, bear it, were his friend here. But Stephen is no doubt endangering himself foolishly, and Jack hasn’t the slightest idea where. Stephen ashore is a reliable, resourceful fellow, and Jack ought to trust him more than he trusts himself when there is no great swell of sea beneath his feet. But Mahon is not so distant a memory, and neither is Stephen’s broken face at Diana’s cruel news.

Sophie is exhausted, continually so, and once when he came to bed she wept. He turned around, then, aghast, and spent the night in the observatory. Captain Jack Aubrey, the coward. She has been careful to welcome him since, and he, too, has been careful to read her like he would read the sea, and not come into their marriage bed with any expectations save a sound slumber.

But even his slumber is not sound. There is no rock of the sea under him; his bed is large and spacious and soft, and so unlike the cot he is used to that he tosses and turns all night. And for all that he adores Sophie, and truly he adores her with all his heart, he misses Stephen, and he misses his ship.

Oh for the old days, before all Stephen’s spying, when it was just the two of them, and the only Sophie he knew was the _Sophie_. But he would not trade his wife for all the diseased cabbages in the world, nor would he abandon his position as Captain, a post he has grown more than accustomed to, and shuffles the thought from his mind.

Still, if only Stephen were here, his mind would be much more at ease. It is not just for missing their music, nor even his company, which although not always pleasant is always welcome. It is, too, because Jack does not know where he is or what his secret business requires of him. He worries for the man, for how pinched and drawn he is, and for what the future holds for a man like his particular friend.

 

 


	3. Silver Bangles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the table in at Jack's cottage, Stephen is struck by the memory of Dil.

The girl Cecilia is a clumsy child, too doted upon by far, and not overly bright. Stephen watches her foul her dress with a spoonful of gravy, and is reminded, quite painfully, of another little girl a world and lifetime away. Dil, wild, precious Dil, never would have fouled her little square of cloth; she treasured it, treasured everything she had, and she had very little.

Little Cecilia twists her head to and fro, and her curls shimmer and shake in the candlelight. Not unlike the shake of two stick-thin arms, covered in twinkling silver bangles; a little girl’s desire to have what other girls had, finally made manifest. It was a wish that was simple and utterly easy to fulfill. All it took was money. All that took her was money, too. Greed, and a life snuffed out.

Stephen chokes, watches the candle flame to distract himself, and remembers burning her body.

“Stephen, are you quite well?” Jack, bless him, is looking after him with true concern. Stephen realizes after a moment that his hand is clenched over his heart, over the mass of scar tissue that resides there, and Jack’s pale face is easy to decipher.

“Quite well, brother, you needn't worry. Just a memory.”

Jack hums, looks worried, but is clearly uncomfortable discussing more at the table with Sophie and her mother present. Which was, of course, Stephen’s intention.

Jack told him that he spoke during his fevered delirium after India, assured him it was all kept in his confidence, that the ship’s men were not allowed in for all the time he was raving, and that Jack himself would never utter a word of it. He wonders, as he loosens his hand from his breast, if he spoke of Dil. If he did, it was likely in Urdu, and thus far beyond Jack’s comprehension.

He prays Jack never has to lose a child, and vows to do everything in his power to prevent it.

 

 


	4. Bastards and Other Unwanteds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen reflects on Jack's attitudes towards his daughters.

Jack speaks of his daughters as unwanted things, never cruelly, but with vague disappointment and unease at their existence in his life. Although Stephen does not find them particularly interesting (lumps of unthinking flesh only find their way into his attention when he means to dissect them) his jaw clenches at every dismissive word toward them.

Captain Jack Aubrey desires a son. As hale as his twin girls are, they will not fit into his perfect fantasy. And Sophie, darling Sophie, whom Stephen respects quite fully and whom he conspired to help in her quest to marry Jack, is not so dull as to miss her husband’s meaning, and looks to her feet every time he speaks of them. 

Stephen drinks a measure of laudanum in his room and tries to dissect within himself why the notion of Jack’s disinterest in his new progeny wrongs him. It is not for Sophie’s sake, although he feels sympathetic towards her. It is for his own. The realization is displeasing. He had not lied when he told the old man in the alley in Bombay, so long ago, that he had been of Dil's cast, something unavoidable and undesirable. Untouchable.

Bastard boys and unwanted girls are perhaps not so different, no matter which continent they are born to.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love!


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